


Where the lost things go

by zipadeea



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dialogue Heavy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Jason Todd, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, handwavy-universe jumping, helena is red hood, she's not in a great place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 14:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18448781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zipadeea/pseuds/zipadeea
Summary: Jason finds someone very unexpected on patrol one night.Helena finds someone who finally understands.***AU where Helena Wayne is Red Hood.





	Where the lost things go

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a bit drunk as I post this, so I'm questioning all of it. But Helena Wayne is cool and I made up some universe where she's Red Hood but younger and she's not dealing well. Warning for suicidal thoughts. 
> 
> Read if you like, but also remember to love and take care of yourself. You're wonderful and good and amazing :)

“I’ve got a jumper.”  

Jason says it quietly, interrupting the fervent discussion taking place over the comms. Bruce is insistent someone has broken into the cave, but Oracle and Alfred can find no evidence, nothing at all missing or out of place.  

Jason’s comment quiets everyone.  

“Where?” Dick asks hurriedly, breath panting as he presumably sprints across the rooftops.  

“Wayne Tower.” 

Bruce curses. “Description.” 

“Looks like a girl. Teenager, maybe sixteen. Hair’s dark. She’s wearing a brown leather jacket with a red hoodie underneath. Five-five I’d say, probably one-ten soaking wet.” A girl, a young wisp of a girl, with her hair blowing in the wind, standing on the ledge of the roof, the world miles beneath her, staring forlornly off at the Gotham skyline.  

She looks lost. She looks devastated. She looks....she looks _just_ like-- 

“Doesn’t match the description of any current missing persons, Hood,” Tim says succinctly. “Maybe--,” 

“I’ll keep the mic on,” Jason interrupts, turning down the comm in his ear and toeing himself forward as he notices the girl’s weight shift toward the edge. 

“Worried I’ll jump?” the girl asks suddenly, turning slightly, showing Jason a soft and humorless smirk.  

Jason startles, then stops short. “I don’t know. Are you planning on it?”  

The girl shrugs, turning around to face Jason. She still doesn’t step off the ledge.  

“Haven’t decided. I’m running out of time, though.”  

“Time to what?”  

She frowns, looking for all the world like she fighting to keep her eyes from rolling. “Time to decide. He’ll find me soon enough.”  

Jason feels bile climbing up his throat. “I can help you hide, if that’s what the problem is. I can get him out of your--,” 

The girl laughs. It’s loud and humorless and sad, but it shuts Jason up, which is probably the point.  

“How noble of you.” It should sound condescending, it’s probably meant to sound condescending, but it just sounds warm and honest. “He’s not the problem. I’m the problem. He just doesn’t approve of my solutions.”  

Jason really hopes she doesn’t jump. 

“Well, how’s about we sit right on down and have a good ole’ chit-chat about that?” Jason says, plopping down right on the roof and crossing his legs. She doesn’t sit.  

It was worth a shot.  

“Your grammar is atrocious. Were you born in a barn?” The girl frowns, and Jason is struck again by an intense sense of familiarity. Something about her mouth, the shape of her eyes.... 

“Park Row, actually. Nerves bring out the street in me. I’m usually quite eloquent.”  

Jason hears a muted snort over the comms.  

Demon brat is such a brat.  

“How did you meet Batman?” She asks, nodding to the bat on his chest. It’s not something Jason likes to think about anymore. But a story’s a story, and a story means talking. Talking means listening, and not yet jumping to one’s untimely death, so-- 

“Stole the hubcaps off the Batmobile’s tires. Got three of them stowed away before he caught me.”  

Jason can tell by the way her green eyes finally widen that he’s managed to surprise her.  

“No shit?”  

“No shit.” 

“So, what, he bestowed upon you that ugly-ass red headgear and told you to go proclaim his gospel of justice and fear to the whole of Gotham?”  

Jason can’t help but snort. He takes off the helmet and says, “Nah. Asshole took me home and made me Robin. Had a good few years until I got myself blown up by the Joker.”  

The girl turns away.  

Jason stands back up immediately.  

“No shit?” Her voice is wavering. Jason thinks she might be crying.  

He takes a deep breath. “No shit.”  

A commotion suddenly overtakes Jason’s previously muted comms. Sheer force of will keeps him from slamming his hand to his ear in shock.  

“Hood? Hood! Holy fucking—there's another Batman here, another Nightwing, too, looking for their Red Hood. She’s--,” 

Jason turns off the volume.  

He leaves the mic on.  

“What’s your name?” He asks softly, stepping slowly forward.  

“Red Hood.”  

“Not that that isn’t badass, but it’s not your name. And it’s already been taken around here.” 

She turns slightly. Her green eyes widen when she realizes how close Jason has come.  

He stops with over an arms-length between them.  

“Helena,” she whispers. “Helena Wayne.”  

“Shoulda realized. You look exactly like your dad. ‘Cept the eyes--,” 

“My mother’s eyes,” Helena mumbles, like she’s heard it a thousand times before.  

Jason raises his eyebrows. “I was going to say you have eyes like a cat.”  

Helena smiles.  

It’s a beautiful smile, toothy and bright, the smile Bruce only ever got on the good days, the best days when Jason was a child and life was happy, and everything was bright and nice and fun and-- 

“My name is Jason.” Jason sticks out his hand.  

Helena takes it and shakes, all without stepping off the ledge. Her grip is firm and good, the shake of a businessman, not an heiress. She’s tough. She’s ruthless and well trained.  

She died like he did, he realizes. She’s got four loaded guns and ammo on her person, and a sharpened knife in each boot.  

She came back like he did, and now she doesn’t want to be here anymore. 

But she didn’t want her family to find the body.  

 Jason lets go of her hand.  

“You’re running out of time, Helena,” Jason whispers. His mics are still on. They can hear him, but he can’t hear them.  

Jason is close enough that they can hear her, too.  

“They’re here?” 

“Yes. You’re gonna have to make a decision soon enough.”  

Helena sighs. Her eyes are bright.  

“I died, Jason. I died horribly.” 

He nods. “I know. I did, too.”  

“And then I came back horribly. And then Talia found me. And then--,” Helena gasps. “They replaced me, Jason. They gave stupid Timmy Drake from down the road my uniform, and—and Mom and Dad, they--,” 

Internally, Jason says ‘fuck it’, steps forward, and pulls the smaller girl into a hug.  

Helena doesn’t pull away. She grips the back of his jacket tightly.  

Jason holds the back of her head with his hand. A long white streak of hair drapes over his shoulder.  

“Mom’s pregnant. They’re having another baby. They just—they replaced me, in every way they could. They filled up all the holes I left behind, and now I’m back and I don’t fit anywhere.” 

Helena takes another gasping breath. “I killed the Joker. I sneaked into Arkham and shot him in the head. I didn’t even let him talk, just shot him and walked away. I didn’t--he scared me so much. I couldn’t exist in a world where he was still alive, Jason. I couldn’t.”  

Helena cries.  

Jason cries, too.  

“You’re a whole lot better than me, kiddo. Braver, too. I kept trying to get B to kill him, never worked out.” 

Helena laughs. It’s a horribly fake. “Daddy won’t kill anyone. He knows if he does, he’ll go off the rails and end up just like us. We’re his worst nightmare, his greatest fear. ”  

Helena begins to pull away. Jason holds her tighter.  

“You’re wrong.” 

Helena looks up.  

“I guarantee your dad’s worst nightmare is finding your dead body in the wreckage of that warehouse. It’s carrying you out of there and taking your body home. It’s having to tell everyone that you’re gone, and burying you six feet under a week later. 

“His nightmare already came true, kiddo. Don’t make him live it again.”  

Helena buries her face in her hands.  

“I don’t fit. They all replaced me, they moved on, there’s--,” 

“Helena--,” Jason squats down in front of her, hands on her shoulders. “I’ve only known you for ten minutes, but as your kind-of brother, please trust me when I say nothing could replace you. Your family learned to live again, sweetheart. That doesn’t mean they forgot about you. I don’t think anyone could forget about you, kid. I sure won’t.” 

Helena takes a deep breath. Jason doesn’t let go of her shoulders.  

They’re both silent for a moment, just breathing until-- 

“Don’t you ever think it was just easier being dead?” Helena asks quietly.  

“All the time. I don’t--I don’t remember much of it, but I know it was peaceful. I think I was happy.”  

“Me too.”  

“We’re miracles though, you know?” Jason says suddenly. “We’re fucking miracles. Like seriously, who besides Jesus Christ himself has come back from the dead like us? They should make us fucking saints, at the very least.” 

Helena’s brows furrow. “Lazarus came back. Ra’s Al Ghul. Superman--,”  

“It was a rhetorical question, Helena.”  

Helena smirks. “Do you know why it happened? Do you know why we’re back?”  

Jason grabs her hand, and finally gets her to sit with him on the rooftop.  

“No. I don’t. But don’t you think we owe it to ourselves to figure out why?”  

“What if it was a fluke? What if there’s no reason we came back?”  

Jason swallows thickly. “Then we make the most of it. Don’t go now. Please don’t make me watch.”  

Helena bites her lip. “I can’t go home. I—I killed him, Jason. I killed the Joker. Dad’s not gonna let me go home.”  

Jason swipes the white strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve killed a lot people Helena. Drug lords and murderers, rapist and fools. I killed them. Took their heads, kept count. Dad still lets me come home. 

“Dad  _wanted_  me to come home. It took a really long time for both of us to get in a good place, but he always did. 

“He wants you home, kid. If you only believe one thing I’ve said tonight, believe that.” 

“He’s right,” a voice says behind them. Jason and Helena both glance back to find a whole contingent of bats behind them, two Batmans at the front.  

It’s not Batman’s voice that responds, though.  

It’s Bruce’s.  

Time is up.  

“Helena, please,” Bruce chokes out, stepping forward, arm flailing like he, for the first time in his adult life, has no fucking clue what to do. 

Jason supposes it’s unlikely for even Batman to have a gameplan for talking his undead child away from the brink.  

“Please, sweetie, please just come home. Please. We’ve--I’ve missed you. I missed you so much. I can’t--please come home.” 

Helena stands. Jason keeps a firm hand around her wrist.  

“Dad--I, I killed him. I killed the Joker and--,” 

“Honey, I don’t give a shit. There’s nothing you could do that’s so bad we wouldn’t let you home, kiddo. You’re ours. You’re my baby. Helena please, just, just come home with us. Please.” 

Jason has never heard any version of Bruce beg.  

It makes his eyes sting.  

They all stare for a while at the outstretched, gloved hand. The hand beckoning Helena Wayne home.  

“The new baby—what, what will you name it?” Helena finally asks. Her Bruce tilts his head in confusion.  

“It’s--the baby’s a boy. We know he’s a boy. Your mother wants to call him Matthew. I like the name Terrance.”  

Helena crinkles her nose. “Ugh, no, I’m not having a brother named Terry. Promise you won’t name him Terry, I need to save him from a life of teasing.”  

Jason knows Bruce is inexplicably biting back a grin.  

“I promise.” 

“Call him Jason.” Helena says suddenly, looking down at Jason, still holding her wrist. “My brother, Jason.”  

Her Bruce smiles. A real smile, the matching smile, a beautiful smile, toothy and bright.  

“Jason. I like it.”  

000 

Batman, Nightwing, and Red Hood dos are returned to their own universe within the hour.  

His Bruce uses the excuse the get Jason back to the cave.  

“You did a good thing tonight, Jason,” Bruce says solemnly, cowl off, everyone else tucked away in bed. “You saved Helena’s life.”  

Jason sighs, leaning back in the office chair before the computer.  

“I just talked to her, Bruce. I talked and I listened. Sometimes, that’s all people want.”  

Bruce nods like he understands. Jason isn’t sure that he does.  

He rises from the chair, heading to the stairs and the promise of a bed; Alfred will be happy to see him at breakfast in the morning.  

Jason turns sharply at the hand on his shoulder.  

“I’m proud of you, Jay.” Bruce says it softly, looking him straight in the eye. Jason taps the hand on his shoulder lightly twice before pulling away.  

“G’night, Boss.”  

“Good night.”  

Jason turns around and walks toward the steps, until, “Jason?” 

Bruce is still standing there, just watching him walk away. “I just—I hope you know, nothing—you'll always have a home here. No matter what you do, no matter what happens, it will never be so bad that you can’t come home. Okay?” 

Jason is having troubling swallowing around the lump in his throat.  

“Okay, Dad.”  

His Bruce smiles. A real smile, a beautiful smile, toothy and bright. The smile Bruce only ever got on the good days, the best days when Jason was a child and life was happy, and everything was bright and nice and fun.  

Maybe it still can be.  

**Author's Note:**

> My parents told me that when i went to college. 'Nothing will ever be so bad that you can't come home.' It's a really beautiful and powerful thing. I think Jason needs to hear it. Hope you enjoyed! Sorry if you didn't. Either way, thanks for reading.


End file.
